HIGH SCHOOL SWIMMING: Hamilton boys claim win over Ewing

HAMILTON — One couldn’t blame Hamilton swim coach Dan Seeth if he wanted to just gush about his team’s victory yesterday, since the Hornets haven’t had many over the years.

But after Hamilton’s 92-76 victory over winless Ewing in the Lea Terry Natatorium, the coach chose to praise the effort of both sides.

“I was very pleased with all of my guys’ performances today,” said Seeth, whose squad improved to 2-7. “I didn’t expect it to be this tight for as long as it was and that’s a credit to Ewing, they had a good meet too. They should be very pleased with themselves.”

Indeed the Devils should be. It’s not that they don’t have good swimmers, they just don’t have enough.

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Ewing led through the first six events before sophomore Jake Torres’ win in the 400 meters helped Hamilton go 11-5 in that event and pull ahead for good.

“We’ve gotten stronger.We’re just still missing the numbers,” coach Stef Harrison said. “We were up by one going into the 400 but we knew we had to be up by more than that going into the back half of the meet in order to win. We only had two guys in the 400 and back, and only one in the breast.”

Micah Bergstrom helped keep Ewing in it with three first-place finishes, while Sam Stewart and Trevor Hahn won twice.

Sophomore John Novak had the first four-win day of his career, Torres and Griffin Hutton each had two firsts and a second, and Matthew Maul was on two winning relay teams.

The victory doubled Hamilton’s win total from last year — and that win was a co-ed victory over Trenton.

“I think it’s fantastic,” Torres said. “Coming from that one win over Trenton last year to having two wins already before we even swim Trenton this year is just fantastic.”

Ewing wasn’t going to make it easy.It led 31-30 after the 50 free, 39-38 after the 100 fly and 47-46 after the 100 free.

It wasn’t until Torres won the 400 and Edward Kitner took third that Seeth said “I could exhale a little bit.”

“I knew I had to come through,” said Torres, who is Hamilton’s second best 400 man behind Hutton. “After the break, we were down by one point and then in the fly I started getting a little nervous. But I knew we got more points than them in the 400 and I was like ‘OK we got this.’

“We were up (75-64) and I thought ‘OK we need to kick it into high gear, everyone has to go their fastest and we can win this.’”

Seeth and Harrison were both curious as to what the outcome would be if Ewing had some depth.

“It would be nice if we could fill out our events because we’ve got a lot of kids that can win,” Harrison said. “Or they could go second third and then we have nothing else because we don’t have anyone behind that.”

“If they had more of them it would have been a much closer meet, I don’t know how it would have turned out,” Seeth said. “I was impressed with them, and my guys swam really well too.”

Well enough to double up last year’s positive outcomes with a chance to even get a few more.